THE University of Tennessee is urging staff and students to stop referring to each other with gender-specific pronouns like “hers” and “his” and use terms like “xyr” and “zirs” instead.

In an effort to create a more inclusive campus, the Knoxville university has adopted gender-neutral pronouns and outlined how to use them in a comprehensive guide.

The new words include “ze” and “xe” for subjects, “hir”, “zir” and “xem” for objects and “hirs”, “zirs” and “xyr” for pronouns.

Donna Braquet, the director of the university’s Pride Center for diversity and inclusion, said the new language would make the campus a more “welcoming and inclusive” place for people who did not identify with traditional genders.

“These may sound a little funny at first, but only because they are new,” she said.

“The ‘she’ and ‘he’ pronouns would sound strange too if we had been taught ‘ze’ when growing up.”

The University of Tennessee’s new gender-neutral language.Source:Supplied

She recommended that staff and students should not “assume someone’s gender by their appearance”, adding transgender people and others who do not identify with the gender binary may use a different legal name and pronouns that the ones they were assigned at birth.

With a new semester set to begin, Braquet suggested staff should ask students to provide their preferred name and pronoun to ensure they “are not singling out transgender or non-binary students”.

She also said that when someone was in doubt about a person’s preferred pronoun, it would be polite to ask.

“The more we make sharing of pronouns a universal practice, the more inclusive we will be as a campus,” Braquet said.

“When our organisational culture shifts to where asking for chosen names and pronouns is the standard practice, it alleviates a heavy burden for persons already marginalised by their gender expression or identity.”

Many people who do not identify with gender binary prefer to select their own pronouns.